Review: 180 Days of Social Studies 1st

When I noticed that our history class did not have a lot for social studies I decided to look for something to add into our homeschool. I came across 180 Days of Social Studies and decided to try it. So, we started with the kindergarten version and I thought it was quite well done so we have kept it for 1st grade as well. Just like with the kinder one the booklet is done in black and white and I wish it was done in color. It goes over so much but in an easy to understand way for the age group that would be using it. 180 Days goes over American things so if you are homeschooling in another country and not learning about American history then I would look for another curriculum to use. The 1st grade version goes over the systems of government, civics, economics, geography and history.

The thing I like best about 180 Days is that you only do a page a day. If your school year is a 36 weeks then you are perfectly set up to do 1 page a day. Since we do a 47 week school year we only do a few pages a week. Another good thing about 180 Days of Social Studies is that it there is not a whole lot of work on each page. This way you can go over the content in detail and your child will not get bored or overwhelmed with a lot of work. Every 5 days will go over things on a particular subject then change to another one for the next 5 days. There is multiple choice questions, matching, fill in the blank, cut and paste, matching and drawing. The one thing I do not like about the cut and paste is that sometimes if you will have to cut but the next page you still need to do. So, when this happens I just turn the cutting into drawing a line for where you would have pasted it.

Some of the concepts in the 180 Days of Social Studies maybe incredibly easy for your child. In fact, most of the concepts in the 1st grade version were easy or they wrote it in a very simple way that our daughter had no trouble completing the work. They make it very easy for a child to understand. Somethings we did expand on like our daughter showed great interest in the American flag so I showed her different versions of our flag over the years. The great thing about homeschooling is that you have the ability to expand on anything your child wants. What curriculum are you using for social studies/history? For history we use Story of the World. Let us know in the comment section below what things you use.

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Tips & Tricks: Making a Review

I recently posted on social media the reviews that my daughter did. They were for the 1st 6 weeks of our 2nd grade year. I got asked a lot about them. How did I make them? How did your daughter remember all of this? I also got comments that it is too much, public school does not do that, your history is too involved, etc. So let's start off with how I make a review. For math it is very easy I make a list of everything she learned. On the last week of that 6 or 12 week any math she does that is on that list counts towards the review. Anything on the list that is not done during the week I give her a few problems on each. Because I want to make sure that she has understood the concepts I make the problems hard. If they are too easy there is no way for me to know if she really understands or if she can just do easy problems. For history I make questions based off what I have read from the textbook. I pull out the key information. We also do social studies and geography. I make questi

Tips & Tricks: Grading

When grading first thing you need to do is check your state laws on homeschool. Some states require you to keep record of your curriculum and and grading while some don’t. I do not have to keep any records or grading. Since I use Timberdoodle they have an awesome online scheduler that I use. It has all the curriculum that we use and in the check boxes I put the grades. At the end of each year I keep the scheduler pages so I have records. Below is how I grade things. I also do not show our daughter the grades or tell her them. I don’t want her to worry about getting a bad grade. When she’s in middle school and high school grades that’s when I’ll start letting her know about grade. My grading system: Pre-K - 2 Grade: she will not see the grade E: excellent; no extra work needed; 100-90% S: satisfactory; give a little extra work; 89-80% N: needs improvement; give a lot of extra work; 79-0% 3 - 5 Grade: she will only see letter grade if she wants to know her grade A: 100-90%

Tips & Tricks: Class Schedule

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